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Premier Greg Selinger omitted a number of important issues from his State of the Province address at Winnipeg Convention Centre Tuesday.

Politicians aren’t usually too keen to discuss the serious problems and crisis situations plaguing their jurisdictions, largely because they’re more interested in getting re-elected than solving real social and economic problems.

Selinger is no exception to that.

So it’s up to us to fill in the blanks so Manitobans can get a more balanced analysis of the state of affairs in our province. Here is the Sun Party’s State of the Province address to help fill those gaps.

• Selinger told a luncheon crowd of about 1,000 how much more money his government has been spending in recent years on new programs, higher health care bills and expanded government departments. But he didn’t say a word about one of the most pressing concerns his government has created. The Selinger government is running a structural deficit of about a half-billion dollars a year. Despite that, the premier made no reference at all to how, when — or if — he was going to bring the province’s books back into the black. He later told reporters his government has pushed back the target year for balancing the books to 2016-17, although he provided no strategic plan on how he would achieve that.

• Violent crime in Manitoba is at crisis levels. Statistics Canada reported that in 2011, Manitoba continued to have the worst violent crime in the country as measured by the agency’s violent crime severity index. Manitoba scored 167 on the index, nearly double the national average of 85. Despite the Selinger government’s massive increases in social program spending and the creation of entirely new social-service departments over the years, Manitoba has more gangs and more organized crime than ever before. We didn’t hear that in Selinger’s speech, nor did we hear any solutions to Manitoba’s violent crime problem other than to keep increasing spending on more social programs.

• Manitoba has the second-highest income taxes in the country for middle and upper-income families. The Manitoba government confiscates more of its residents’ paycheques than any other province in the country except Quebec for middle-class families. There was no mention of that in the speech.

• Selinger said people are no longer leaving Manitoba for greener pastures in other provinces. That’s factually incorrect. According to the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics — a provincial government agency — Manitoba lost a net 4,449 people to other provinces last year. In fact, Manitoba has lost between 2,500 and 8,600 every year to other provinces on a net basis since 2000.

• The premier boasted about how much more money his government was spending on health care in recent years. What he didn’t discuss was the quality of results his government was getting for the amount of tax dollars going into the system. According to a recent Fraser Institute report on health care wait times, Manitoba had the second-longest average wait time — 17.5 weeks — for patients seeking treatment after their first appointment with a specialist. The wait time for an elective MRI in Manitoba is 11 weeks, according to Manitoba Health. That’s more than double the wait time of five weeks in 2007. The average wait time in Winnipeg for a total hip replacement is still six months. And the wait time for knee replacement surgery is over seven months.

That’s our addendum to the State of the Province address. Check back here next year for more updates.

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State of affairs in Manitoba far from ideal

Premier Greg Selinger omitted a number of important issues from his State of the Province address at Winnipeg Convention Centre Tuesday.

Politicians aren’t usually too keen to discuss the serious problems and crisis situations plaguing their jurisdictions, largely because they’re more interested in getting re-elected than solving real social and economic problems.

Selinger is no exception to that.

So it’s up to us to fill in the blanks so Manitobans can get a more balanced analysis of the state of affairs in our province. Here is the Sun Party’s State of the Province address to help fill those gaps.

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